Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday October 07, 2011 @10:40AM
from the somebody-warn-tom-cruise dept.

suraj.sun tips news that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun testing its project to predict future crimes on members of the public. The Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) project is "designed to track and monitor, among other inputs, body movements, voice pitch changes, prosody changes (alterations in the rhythm and intonation of speech), eye movements, body heat changes, and breathing patterns." A field test was performed at a large venue earlier this year, and documents recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that testing is proceeding on other members of the public as well. "It's not clear whether these people were informed that they're participating in a FAST study."

In the future this will be looked back on as being as stupid as McCarthyism. Looking for terrorists under every bed and around every corner, monitoring people's bodies for signs of terrorist intent...the terrorists have won beyond their wildest dreams. And if we examine Pearl Harbor as precedent, none of us will live to see the damage undone.

I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts. The radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep. And in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plantlife. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided. With the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.

In the future this will be looked back on as being as stupid as McCarthyism. Looking for terrorists under every bed and around every corner, monitoring people's bodies for signs of terrorist intent...the terrorists have won beyond their wildest dreams. And if we examine Pearl Harbor as precedent, none of us will live to see the damage undone.

Sorry, dude, but they're already doing that.. been doing it for years. All your email, all your telephone calls, everything you do online which can be connected to you by IP address or account activity (such as GMail, Hotmail, ATT.NET, etc.) They tracked down that Craigslist Killer pretty amazingly fast, didn't they? It's stored somewhere and the spooks can reference it fast if they decide there's a need, real or imagined.

Even activity on such a subversive site as Slashdot is being... hold on, doorbe

As devil's advocate, technology of this nature could be used to find and diagnose people with psychological issues who stay away from the doctor, or simply don't have the money to get evaluated. And this technology can be used to bring help to people before rather than after a violent incident.

As a culture, we find that the most appropriate treatment of people who have a criminal psychosis is to isolate them and help them, forcibly. We also find

As a culture, we find that the most appropriate treatment of people who disagree with the government is to isolate them and help them, forcibly. We also find that they are not "wrong" and don't need to be punished, but require help. I don't readily see how an act of violence in this case is a critical point where we force help on the unwilling. So, why not force it earlier and prevent the violent acts?

As a culture, we find that the most appropriate treatment of people who have a criminal psychosis is to isolate them and help them, forcibly. We also find that they are not "wrong" and don't need to be punished, but require help. I don't readily see how an act of violence in this case is a critical point where we force help on the unwilling. So, why not force it earlier and prevent the violent acts?

This time though, unlike the Evil Communists, the Evil Terrorists can't just call it quits and screw up the whole program. That's because if Al Qaida announced, today, that "Hey everyone, we're giving up trying to attack the US", they'd just find some other group of people to call the Evil Terrorists, and all the oppressive tactics can continue unabated.

In the future this will be looked back on as being as stupid as McCarthyism. Looking for terrorists under every bed and around every corner, monitoring people's bodies for signs of terrorist intent...the terrorists have won beyond their wildest dreams. And if we examine Pearl Harbor as precedent, none of us will live to see the damage undone.

Perhaps, but how was his accuracy? It doesn't matter if I know there to be an alien in the Senate if I accuse 90 Senators that aren't aliens I'd be just a delusional crackpot. Same goes for McCarthy, when there's little concern for accuracy you might as well just be randomly arresting people.

349 pseudonyms in the United Statesâ"including citizens, immigrants, and permanent residentsâ"who cooperated in various ways with Soviet intelligence agencies

Venona wasn't terribly accurate, either. Some people were identified with more than one pseudonym, and some of the "cooperation" was as basic as a traveler carrying a letter for a friend/relative (international mail was horribly unreliable, even worse than today) to be posted at their destination, or doing the favor of using a bank accou

Indeed. Though furnace technology took a huge leap forward. Seriously though way does it take wars to motivate countries to put a focused effort on a big issue? For example fossil fuel usage. Most people agree it sucks. I'd suspect most people in the west do not like the governments in the middle east and russia that the money goes to supporting. So way can't we get people to agree oil sucks and we need a serious, manhattan project like (~10% GDP) effort to find and utilize alternatives? Better waging a war

Pearl Harbor began the best thing to happen to the US in the last century, the Second World War. The combination of economic expansion and military supremacy which resulted dwarfed the costs such that they were trivial by comparison.

That's easily said by someone who, most likely, has never even heard a shot fired in anger. However, for one of the U.S. soldiers, like my father-in-law, who spent time sitting in a German P.O.W. during WWII, I daresay the costs were anything but trivial. I think that my father-in-law would probably agree that he did what needed to be done to protect liberty, and as such, the cost of his service was worth what it produced, but I seriously doubt that he would say that "economic expansion" or "military supremacy" (meaning, in this context, "becoming a world superpower", as opposed to "stopping the advance of a very, very evil regime") was worth even a single minute of the time he spent as a prisoner of war.

That's OK. When the bully comes to your backyard, we'll still have your back.

We are the bully. Who will protect them from us? Generally the people we try to save (like the Iraqis) end up being caged and tortured by us (Abu Ghraib, Gitmo) for their own safety. Yeah, we are definitely the good guys. That is why we advocate torture and laugh at the Geneva convention and have over 2 million of our own citizens caged like animals and abused by sick sadists in uniform even though most of them have actually harmed no one. If the US were a person we would have to be labeled 'one sick fuck'.

So... If they don't do anything and not having clear information on who to monitor and not. They will take heat for people who commit crimes, and are not on their radar and they are inspecting people who will not commit crimes.Or.They come up with a way to profile people without personal judgement and then they they will take heat for that.

Logically if you are going to take heat for either you might as well choose the one where the crime isn't committed.

So what they're doing is taking variables that are innocent and legal (changing the pitch of one's voice is not an inherently criminal act), and using it to justify increased surveillance of that individual. And naturally, everyone will be okay with this because "only criminals have anything to hide".

Everyone forgets, of course, that you don't need to be watched for very long before you break a law. It's so hopelessly complex that even lawyers, who spend several years learning about it, are unable to avoid being ensnared against a determined law enforcement effort. If they want you, they will get you. So basically, this system is selecting people to turn into criminals. There is no preventative value here... increased surveillance on anyone will eventually yield evidence that can be used for criminal prosecution.

So what they're doing is taking variables that are innocent and legal (changing the pitch of one's voice is not an inherently criminal act), and using it to justify increased surveillance of that individual.

<voice class="indian_accent">I am in some serious shit now my friend...</voice>

The thing is: profiling works, to some degree. People who are nervous often are hiding something. Every police officer will profile the people around them, and they should. That is how they reduce the signal-to-noise ratio. There are lots of people out there, and since you can't really be expected to casually see the criminals in the act, you need to profile them in order to pick out people who are likely to commit crimes. The TSA is actually an example of what happens when you don't: you end up strip searc

Spot on. Mod parent up. Almost everyone is guilty of some crime, be it copyright infringement, tax fraud, hate speech, or some driving felony. Heck, if the Six Degrees of Seperation hypothesis [wikimedia.org] is right you're probably close enough to some terrorist to count as a terrorist yourself.

Everyone forgets, of course, that you don't need to be watched for very long before you break a law. It's so hopelessly complex that even lawyers, who spend several years learning about it, are unable to avoid being ensnared against a determined law enforcement effort. If they want you, they will get you.

It's interesting how everyone in this thread seems to assume that this technology will cause an increase in law enforcement activity. However, for agencies operating under fixed budgets, more money spent on expensive surveillance technologies means that less money will be available for payroll. That is, actual enforcement activity will actually decline as a result of adoption.

If this detection technique improves upon existing methods for detecting criminal activity, it will result in more resources being

If the technology is broken, let's hope that it's rejected, but a working detection method that increases the accuracy and efficiency of law enforcement will result in increased protection of citizens' rights.

First, hoping for anything regarding the government is a bad way to start an argument. Second, the words "accuracy" and "efficiency" regarding law enforcement are typically red flag words to indicate tyranny and oppression. "fair and impartial" is what a democratic country hopes for, not accurate and efficient.

Where did they find so many criminals to be able to test out these detection methods to be able to say that they work? I mean, considering that they haven't actually caught ONE terrorist yet (PS - the ones that make it onto the plane and are taken down by passengers a crew don't count). This is probably just another expensive DHS money pit. So now not only will you get cancer from going through the "super safe" scanners that have never been rated or tested for use on humans, but you might just be accused of

I REALLY hope somebody in the higher echelons of the DHS sits down to read a copy of The Minority Report by Phillip Dick. Like the movie based upon it, the story explores the implications of enacting just what the DHS is suggesting. Granted, they're using cameras and screening tech instead of pre-cogs, but IMO they are still are promoting a powerful military force to reach a similar end game. What's happening to this country?

They read the book and said "Well its fiction, but what a great idea". At this point, I think we have to hope they haven't read 1984 yet, it is absolutely imperative that we keep any copies of it away from those dimwits in the DHS, to allow them to get ideas from it (especially since they are likely to see it as "working out in the end").

Since the thread was already Godwinned in the first post, I'm going to say that the Nazis also did similar things to the mentally and physically disabled. It's just a jump from detecting and classifying people like this to eugenics.

It's already a long and glorious tradition. Law enforcement routinely maintain policies that fuck over anyone outside the bell curve in any way. How many times have people been shot for "ignoring police commands"? Well if police can shoot you for ignoring them, what about deaf people? I guess they are just fucked.

Consider these recent google hits:John T. Williams (shot to death for failing to respond to police commands quickly enough, deaf in one ear)Robert Dzieka&#324;ski (tasered to death for being Polish, apparently)Michelle Schreiner (tasered during a low-blood sugar attack)John Harmon (repeatedly tasered and beaten during a blood sugar attack).

I'm sure all those people were "responding abnormally" which is, or soon will be, effectively illegal in itself.

I hope not. Part of the usefulness of research and trials is to avoid bias by letting your subjects know what is being tested.

I and, however, surprised that nobody is screaming "Racial Profiling" when the system uses ethnicity as a tracking factor, unless it's used to simply filer out societal norms.

What I find funniest is that this is EXACTLY what every law enforcement and security guard is trained in for crowd surveillance and operations. These are the clues a human looks for in determining which people m

Ok, I didn't RTFA because I want to whip this off before I go out the door but...

Instead of the "security theater" that passes for inspections at American airports, shouldn't we be emulating the much less intrusive Israeli model? From what I understand (I admit I'm an amateur), instead of passing people through body scanners and whatnot, the Israelis use well trained people to basically talk to people entering the "sterile" zone and WATCH THEIR REACTION. I guess it almost impossible to teach someone not to show outward signs of nervousness especially if they're going to end their life by blowing themselves up (or carrying illegal drugs I suppose). The results speak for themselves, when was the last time you've heard of an Israeli airport or airplane being blown up? Don't tell me it's from lack of fanatical enemies!

Of course, DHS' attempt to use technology instead of well trained PEOPLE could be a fatal flaw but the essential idea, of pre-screening people based on their autonomous reflexes, is not to be dismissed outright.

Ok, and now explain how this will get kickbacks from the buddy-companies that sell the snakeoil scanners, and how this employs people too stupid to find their own ass with both hands so they have to find yours during a "security check", we can talk.

Now combine it with the George Clooney goat killing method. The DHS could simply step to one side and glower at the bad guys as they make their way to the terminal, telepathically forcing terrorists to simply die on the spot. I think they could demonstrate about the same success rate as the current, more invasive program we have today.

It sounds like this is detecting signs of people's behavior changing as they sidestep their inhibitory mechanisms, or in basic terms that they're nervous doing something they know is wrong and the system is detecting their nervousness. Any ideas on how will this pre-screening work on sociopaths, who don't feel any remorse or commitment to societal morals or societal norms? Someone who doesn't experience the human inhibitory reflex? Someone with an anxiety disorder, or otherwise has a (non-criminal) reason t

I have a crime predictor that boasts better than 99.9% accuracy. It always returns "not a criminal."

Seriously, in order for utterly dystopian concept to have any benefits, you'd need a false alarm rate much lower than 0.1%. Even at.01%, for anti-terrorism applications the ratio of false alarms to actual terrorists would be something like 10,000 to 1 -- assuming it had a 100% detection accuracy, which is of course preposterous.

Is it the sentencing of a person for a crime not yet committed, or is it the investigation into crimes not yet committed? If it's not the latter, then this isn't really precrime, more just a potentially dodgy way of investigation.

The DHS is still dicking around with anti-terrorism techniques when our country's economy is being flushed down the toilet at a good rate. Soon, the US will be worthless and no terrorist in their right mind would have any interest in us. It would be akin to stepping on a mole hill.

We're probably 20 years away from that if you consider how much testing will need to be done prior to extensive legal challenges and official tests in various cities and states. It will be the greatest legal tool for oppression mankind has ever known.

But first all potential pre-criminals should be readily identifiable to the common population. I suggest a yellow star of david on their clothes, or perhaps a yellow crescent moon? Then it will become easier to prevent people from doing business with them or having sex with them.

That's not efficient enough, just put booths everywhere and arrest anybody that can't pass the credit check. I mean that is the whole point, right? Relegate the poor to work farms so that the rich don't have to do a damned thing.

The DHS is reaching for new ways to achieve visible results without doing the hard work of battling for the budget needed to hire and train really smart, perceptive people for sensitive posts like TSA agents at airports.

When machines get smart enough to predict someone's future crimes, we're all going to be unemployed, anyway.

without doing the hard work of battling for the budget needed to hire and train really smart, perceptive people for sensitive posts like TSA agents at airports

There's not enough money in the world to accomplish this. As the jobs are currently defined, anybody who takes the job would immediately be unable to be described with those terms (or they'd lose their job for not doing it and thus be unable to be described as being in that job).

Not only that, but the precedent for confiscating property (and charging the property as an accessory to the crime, not the _person_) is well established for things like money. It's easy to destroy someone's life without technically violating _their_ rights. Sadly, your property doesn't have rights, and oh look now people who meet [some shadiness criteria set by fearful politicians] can no longer live within X yards of a Y, which happen to be everywhere, so have fun living under a bridge.

"The DHS is reaching for new ways to achieve visible results without doing the hard work of battling for the budget needed"

Oh, did you mean DHS is trying deperately to justify their existence?

Like every other agency should do. We could hope that performance would be clear evidence of need, but in DHS' case, this is not at all that simple. No successful incidents seems to indicate DHS is doing the job, but reality shows that travelers have so far stopped all attempts, and on the plane at that.

The DHS is reaching for new ways to achieve visible results without doing the hard work of battling for the budget needed to hire and train really smart, perceptive people for sensitive posts like TSA agents at airports.

When machines get smart enough to predict someone's future crimes, we're all going to be unemployed, anyway.

When I read the summary, the first thing I thought was that if they are working on this then they have too big a budget now.

Well, the DHS head was all in favor of speed cameras and tickets-by-mail in Arizona. Those cameras are largely turned off now, as it was apparent that not only was there no due process, but anyone with any pull at all could escape the system entirely. Oh, and if you ignored the tickets, enforcement was at best spotty, and at worst arbitrary. Pathetic. It could have worked, but apparently there wasn't enough profit in it.

I challenged a ticket in court back in 1997. Long story short, the police office on an overpass clocked the guy next to me going 70 in 55. I was innocent. I had what I considered plenty of evidence--weather reports showing that visibility that day was less than 1/4 mile (normal visibility is around 20 miles), and I even caught the cop in an outright lie. He said that he identified my car by the license plate number, even though I had photographs that clearly showed that from his vantage point, this was

Well, "we" did just assassinate an American citizen without due process of law... Just saying.

Law? They didn't charge him with anything, law never even entered into it. They just murdered him. One of their own citizens. And we all know how the US looks after their own, or at least the top 1%. The other 99% are expendable.

Same thing they did to Bin Laden, they had him in custody even, and just murdered him. Probably didn't want anyone to hear anything he might have to say.

If you've pissed off the military enough for them to launch a rocket at you, being a citizen isn't a concern.

So say you're Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich or Cindy Sheehan, all of whom have definitely pissed off the military quite a bit by advocating significantly reducing their funding or ordering them to stop engaging the enemy. Some of those military guys might think it's OK to launch a rocket at them to eliminate the problem of anti-military activity in the US. Does them all being US citizens make it a concern? Do you still see no problem?

The whole point of having a court system is that we can't trust the executive branch to decide who's a Good Guy and who's a Bad Guy.

You see no problem with the military becoming involved in what is essentially a police action (by definition, war is declared on nations, so what nation is "al Qaeda"?), and committing a summary execution upon U.S. citizens without providing the Constitutionally guaranteed right to a hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to charge -- much less convict -- him of the crimes of which he has been accused?!?!

It's already there, just a low-tech version. Look at the RC plane bomber. A man with a dangerously nutty mind but not guilty of anything. The feds baited him into committing all his "crimes" so that they could lock up a potentially dangerous, but innocent man. It's entrapment, even if we feel good about putting the nutball behind bars.

Assuming it were even possible, I believe what would have to happen for it to be remotely viable is for the police to arrest people *as* the crimes are being committed, ideally before any permanent damage is done, although that unfortunately may not always be possible.

Any attempt whatsoever to arrest people before a crime is actually committed regardless of the alleged certainty of it is in all ways wholly unfair and unjust. It is tantamount to arresting somebody for something that they did in an altern

In a field test you want a test group that is capable of producing a range of results that may appear in actual use. A group of DHS agents isn't exactly a snapshot of your average group of travelers -- not enough Muslim terrorist types, far too many jackboot Nazi types.

In Congress they would be testing the only "native American criminal class" so results would be highly skewed there too.

You're giving the Communist way too much credibility here with regards to religion. The reason Communists don't like religion is because it's a culture that provides self governance. They absolutely hate that. They hate the idea of anyone not looking to them as the solution and focal point in their lives. To the Communist, there is no God, only man. The closest you get to God *IS* the Government. It's your mother, father, and absolute provider. It also provides the Communist absolute power to the point of b